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Best Built For Music Production Upgrade To 32GB

As for whether 32GB RAM is enough, it really depends on the size of your sample libraries, whether you purge your samples, whether you run multi-timbral versions of Kontakt or single instances of Kontakt and what DAW you use.

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Apart from all the casual things (browsing, emails, listening to music, etc.) Im also planning on using it for music production and programming (Go-programming for web services) as well as some light photo and video editing.

Apart from programming, Im not doing any of those professionally, only as hobbies.

Music production is orchestral music though which can sometimes contain a LOT of tracks and libraries.

Best Built For Music Production Upgrade To 32GB

I was thinking of these specs: - standard 8GB RAM (will upgrade to 32GB myself, this should be enough, yes) - 256GB SSD (will mostly use external storage for my libraries and plugins along with a NAS for all my media) What Im wondering is whether the i5 hex-core will suffice or if I will notice a substantial increase in performance by going for the hyperthreading-enabled i7 hex-core Thanks.

The issue is that the mini has only two slots, whereas an iMac, for example, has four.

Purchasing 64GB of RAM for four slots is quite a bit cheaper than for two.

If you want 64GB, or foresee a need for it down the road, theres a serious question about whether the Mac mini is a good idea.

At current RAM prices, it will certainly be more expensive than an iMac.

On the broader question of 32GB vs 64GB for orchestral work, as you probably know there is quite a lot of discussion on the internet.

Although SymphonicHollywood Choirs word builder recommends a hex core Mac Pro, Ive found it works okay on mine.

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When I have a lot of fat chords going it does tend to stutter with live play, but I think thats more of a limitation of the software rather than the hardware, as general choirorchestra sounds are fine with fat chords.

If youre running similarly sized libraries (40GB per plugin), the external drive will make a huge impact.

I wouldnt use anything less than a SATA SSD in a USB SATA dock (avoid a 7200RPM drive).

Alternatively if you can justify an upgrade on the SSD, the internal drives are super quick, around 4-5 times faster than a SATA SSD.

The CPU on yours would be fine but Id splurge the extra for a hyperthreaded i7 for longevity purposes.

Double the cores will make some difference (depending on your DAW of choice).

GB of RAM would be more than enough - I couldnt possibly see you exceeding that.

Ive ran crazy tests on mine to try and hit the 16GB memory limit and even with other applications running, it doesnt get close.

Of course, the more RAM macOS has, the more it will use - so you may well see 20GB usage if youve got 32GB installed.

However theres no way itll be using more than 32GB and paging to disk.

Its single core performance is apparently no.1 among all macs ever made Im also buying a mac mini for the same reasons - orchestral mock-ups - and I wouldnt be doing it unless I was confident the mini could handle it, although I should note that Im going for the top spec six-core CPU with multithreading to be safe and to future proof.

Im starting with 8GB RAM also and upgrading to 32GB RAM myself, and eventually will upgrade to 64GB down the line.

Yes, its not as cheap as buying RAM in an iMac which has four slots, but buying external and installing it yourself is still much cheaper than buying it from Apple.

Best Mac Built For Music Production